I played the demo and was underwhelmed, to be honest. Hitting He-111's at 1000 meters with a tap of the trigger and watching them blow up Micheal Bay style was fun, but not really simulation territory.

The reticule in the Spitfire is the wrong size. It's a 105 mil ring, which means that an He-111 should be wingtips on the circle at 220 meters distance, but according to the icons it was much farther away. Or, possibly, they've got the bomber the wrong size and the sight is right.

Airstarts and no landings. Sigh.

I'd recommend this game for people who have never flown a flight sim (other than complete arcade games) before as a familiarization and a gateway to proper ones, but otherwise it's not really up to grade.

The graphics are ruined by the color pallette. Everything is just a variation of one color and washed out. The world is a vibrant place, particularly below five thousand feet.

Did you set it to sim? I think you have to do the first 3 training scenarios, then the realistic and then sim training to unlock those settings.
There are take off's and landings.

It's funny you should mention this because I was messing about with the settings.ini in RoF just yesterday and RoF looks quite comparably to WoP now that I have enabled all the pixel shaders and set HDR to 1 from 0. Performance is not as good as WoP but they both look similar in looks on my PC. With HDR at 1 I now notice dynamic shadows in the cockpit which I never noticed before.

In fact, I notice so many similarities now that I am wondering if the developers of these two sims have some kind of relation to each other. Even the default joystick config uses the same odd button on my Saitek X52 for zooming the cockpit.

LOL, I didn't realize the training missions were in arcade mode - they should make that an option right off the bat.

The weird thing is that I destroyed all the bombers but two in the tutorial and everything went black and it booted me before I could go back for them.

I've owned WoP for a week or so now and love the graphics engine but even on the realistic setting the plane feels like it is on rails and the gameplay is far too easy. Ho-hum.

I think there is a mod that makes it better but can't remember the name of it or where to get it. Anyone here know where this mod is for download?

Hey, Bastido,

That's great that you got RoF looking that good on your machine. Sincerely. I had the settings cranked on mine and it didn't compare to WoP; elsewhere I've posted side-by-side screens of the sims and it wasn't even close. Although, I enjoy many sims and don't fly one because it isn't as good as another in some regard or other; I haven't any sim allegiance that demands I only fly one. What's really the shame to me is RoF's landscape doesn't resemble France or Belgium.

LOL !!!!! Dude if you can beat WOP on full sim settings with Limited Fuel,, Limited Ammo and No retrys,,, Both the entire Campaign and Missions.
Then you are a God !
I have yet to see anyone on the entire World Wide Web pull this off !
I have posted this on just about every Sim forum I know of and No one has been been able to pull it off.
I would pay money ,,, GOOD Money to see it done.

I don't mean to jump on you about this, its just that when you said:

"I've owned WoP for a week or so now and love the graphics engine but even on the realistic setting the plane feels like it is on rails and the gameplay is far too easy"

I fell out of my chair in tears because when WOP is on full sim settings with Limited Fuel,, Limited Ammo and No retrys, I personally thing it is one of the Hardest games I have ever played,and I have played every sim that I know of.

Yes it is easy on Realistic, but you can't call a game easy when you are not playing it on the best setting of the game (Sim).. That makes no sense at all..
Realistic is a not much better then arcade. You can't call a game easy when you are not playing the game on the setting that makes it not easy.
Arcade and even realistic are there to make the game easy.
Now I hope you understand what I'm saying. I just think you didn't realize what you said. I mean even Il2 1946 is easy on realistic.
Desode

JFM, we're going to have to disagree on graphics as a matter of taste.

The overwhelming single color palette sucks all sense of immersion out of WoP for me. While one can say that RoF doesn't depict France very well, WoP doesn't represent England, either. They have roads and more than just a flat pea green that makes up the color of the countryside.

It's a fun game, but not a serious simulation. More generously, it's somewhere in between - a gamulation, if you will. In the tutorials I was half expecting a health or ammo upgrade to float in the air with instructions to fly through it and get a power up.

I'll bow out of the thread and go silent in the forum. Just because this one isn't my cup of tea doesn't mean I should pee in the one you're drinking.

Hey, Dart,

I don't think you are peeing in anything of mine. I appreciate counterpoints and don't get upset by them, although your respect for others is refreshing.

I agree with you about the pea-green; I wish WOP would do away with that and although it doesn't drive me nuts I can see how people couldn't get past it. Somebody somewhere altered some screenshots of WoP to remove that green and they looked amazing. Beneath that green, though, certainly WOP does a better job with their geographic representation of England than RoF does with France or Belgium; one glance via Google Earth verifies that. But I don't like to compare the sims and I enjoy sims for what they are and not what they have over others.

Again, I believe what we call "sims" are all games, and all of them have arcadish features. We all just pick and choose which arcade features we'll accept and which we won't.

Would that because WOP has to render a pretty tiny and highly restrictive for mission creation area compared to the french map in ROF.. And lets not get started on the haze view distance..





Both look amazing but do totally different things, WOP needs pretty much a major re write as without moving ground vehicles which can be instructed and mission placed its just an empty but beautiful canvas. If they can add all the required basic elements (weather, time, mission editor air and ground , proper sized map, roads-rivers-railways with traffic that can be mission based, destructable objects,skinnable aircraft a working multiplayer with dedis to scratch the surface) and not effect the optimized 3d performance they have now then they will have a winner.. But here's the dillema wont BoB SoW be doing that and more anyway for this era..

From the devs comments consoles seem to be priority even for the sequel so Im guessing more of the same with a rather simplified mission editor.

The adage "never judge a book buy its cover" is the simple truth if your looking for anything beyond the gloss of the superb gfx engine.. And mores the pity..